first of all

1. 1.

   before anything else

   “first we must consider the garter snake”

   Synonymsfirstfirstlyforemostfirst off

Questions about first of all

What does first of all mean?

first of all means "before anything else".

What is another word for first of all?

Close synonyms include first, firstly, foremost, first off. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is first of all a common word?

first of all is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.